June 4, 2011

A Blood Pledge: Sisters Are Screwing It Up for Themselves

There are many misfortunes that can drive a young girl to suicide. For Soy (Son Eun-seo), it's an unwanted pregnancy caused by a rich pretty-boy (Choi Min-seong) who insists she get an abortion. For Eun-yeong (Song Min-jeong), it's an abusive dad who repeatedly punches her in the face whenever she's less than perfect. For Yoo-jin (Oh Yeon-seo), it's falling grades, an unsympathetic nun, and a boyfriend who cheats. And for Eun-joo (Jang Kyeong-ah), it's a way to reconnect with a former friend who once gave her an MP-3 player. The last reason is hardly the strongest but it may go to explain why the ghost of Eun-joo is so pissed off at the other three girls when they fail to live up to the suicide pact that inspired her to jump off the parochial school roof in the first place.

Because her eternal bond with Soy hasn't been sealed in the hereafter, this bitter young lady is furiously seeking retribution from the two other means girls who stole her gal pal then her life in short order. That she's not equally angry at Soy is symptomatic of classic jealousy — like the wife who hates the woman who has stolen her husband, while disregarding the fact that it's the man who has betrayed her. When you're screwed by someone you love and you want to reunite with him, you need a target for all that rage. Lucky for Eun-joo, she has two. And so she terrorizes Eun-yeong and Yoo-jin by stalking them across the school grounds, up on the roof, in the bathrooms, inside the gymnasium, over their computers, and in their dreams. She's not a pretty sight either as her steady hand reaches out from the other side to choke, grab, and drip blood. Plus, her violence is hardly restricted to personal revenge. At one point, she causes the doting mother of the guy who impregnated her bosom buddy to spontaneously combust in a stalled car that then proceeds to drift backwards before crashing off-screen to cover up the crime. Now that's angry! A Blood Pledge is the fifth installment of the Whispering Corridors series, a horror franchise united by its all-girl high school settings and its Catholic school uniforms. More interestingly though is that the movie is helmed by writer-director Lee Jong-yong who co-wrote Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.